It’s Sunday, we’re all waiting for Cappsy to finish and post the Tikka To Ride Dwarfcast, so why don’t I fill you in on a couple of behind-the-scenes G&T bits and bobs?

Well, first of all, we’ve added some new desktop backgrounds to our fledgling downloads section. Danny Stephenson continues his trawl through classic BBC 2 idents by bringing you a Dwarfy take on Water, I’ve created a piece of concept BBC2 promo art called Earth, and best of all, Friend of G&T Mick Hayes has kindly reworked, resized and donated an absolutely staggering, must-be-seen-to-be-believed piece of original art called Dead Dwarf. So go check ’em out – I guarantee the latter will be gracing most of your desktops by sunrise.

Meanwhile, we’re expanding our grubby little arms into other internet based, erm, pies, by creating a group on the now-open-to-everyone, million-miles-better-than-MySpace social network known as Facebook. You can find us at “Friends of Ganymede & Titan”, and you can… er… post stuff on the wall. And… see who else has joined. And… no, I’m struggling here. Anyway, we’ll probably come up with something fun and Facebook-only at some point, so go and join for now anyway and make us feel popular. It is, after all, about time we had a bit more love and peace around here instead of arguing about comments made by grumpy old cast members.

While I’m here, too, I might as well remind you that if you’re a LiveJournal type person, you can get G&T news updates by adding rdnews to your Friends list. We’ll be looking to improve our overall syndication in the coming months, with particular emphasis on the way that entries are displayed in the various feeds.

If you’ve got a spare half hour or ten on your hands, then don’t forget that DwarfWiki is still in need of expansion. We’ve laid a lot of the groundwork in building the structure of the Wiki (although, of course, you can create articles that aren’t on there already), but many of the articles really need fleshing out somewhat, and it’s a bigger job than just a few of us are able to take on. It would be fantastic if, within a couple of years, we could work it up towards becoming the number one Red Dwarf knowledge base out there. Since, at the moment, there isn’t really much in the way of competition. Oh, but if you’re that way inclined, be sure to stop off and check out Dwarf‘s own entry on the Real Wikipedia to see if you can lend a helping hand. The page often suffers from vandalism, from people adding irrelevant nonsense, and from raging arguments about whether it should refer to the show in the past or present tense, so it could really do with a helping hand in sorting it out, keeping it under check, expanding with relevant info (and chopping the irrelevant) and working towards Good or Featured status on the site.

Because, you know, Dwarf deserves it. Amid some of the politics and drama that sometimes crop up in fandom, it’s easy to forget that, at the end of the day, the one thing we all have in common is that we’re fans of the show. The show is what matters. We should be getting excited about the news that Rob Grant and Doug Naylor have collaborated on Red Dwarf material for the first time since 1993, not bothering about petty squabbles that have very little to do with the show itself. G&T is not about cliques, arguments, pettiness or even Chloe Annet’s foaming whatsit. It exists to bring news, comment and original content based around a show that we all love and that, despite not being on air since 1999, is still very much alive. It’s about community. And, in John’s case, healthy bouts of profanity.

Cor, that’s two bouts of soapboxing in one blog post. Sorry, didn’t mean for that to happen. Speech over. As you were.

25 Responses to Sunday Sunday Here Again In Tidy Attire

Wow! Alot of information there.
Dead Dwarf is amazing, looks very good and well made.
DwarfWiki is a good idea and I will try my best to update as much as I can.
And I totally agree, the show is why we are all here at the end of the day and it isn’t meant to be causing arguments.

I guess that’s true, John. I was operating on the assumption that there’d be a lot more to Earth than just the insurance gag, but if you’re going to end on it…yeah…it’d have been a good idea to kept quiet.

Ah well. I still believe the BBC would finance it…if he ever wanted to rework it…

As I recall, the original idea was that the insurance gag would have been the ending of the episode. Which would have been a wonderful ending to the show – it’s such a good joke, and really dark, but at the same time hilarious.

But yeah, I guess you could rework it – although as you say, I think if Earth was going to be involved at all, he would have kept quiet.

Actually, as much as I like the idea for Earth, I can imagine a lot of people not liking it…

In an odd way, Rob Grant’s Backwards has it completely right – the realisation that Red Dwarf *is* Lister’s home. I think that’s a perfect ending – because it’s what the show has been *about*, really – life on Red Dwarf. If the first ending of Only The Good had been used, then that would have had a similar feeling as well.

Does Red Dwarf really need a definitive ending though? Surely the whole point is that they’re sort of meandering slowly forwards with no real hope of ever reaching their end goal (a metaphor for life? Probably not, no).

Plus, according to Future Echoes, Lister’s still on the ship when he’s 171. Ok, so that was probably contradicted by Out of Time but it indicates Rob and Doug’s thoughts on the crew’s future circa series one.

I’d do a combination of the Garbage World section of BTL (thus having Lister finally get back to Earth), followed by some variation on the ending to Backwards (thus having him realise that the Dwarf is, in fact, his true home now). As good a book as Last Human is at times, it’s more Backwards that to me represents the satisfying end to the saga.

Allow me demonstrate a possibly staggering level of ignorance (I don’t have the book to hand and haven’t read it this millenia) but aren’t Lister and The Cat both pubescent teenagers at the end of Backwards?

I have to say, I’ve never liked either “Lister as an old man for the Polymorph” sequence, or “Lister and Cat as teenagers for the bulk of Backwards“. When I’m reading the latter, I just tend to try and ignore it in the second half of the book as much as I can…

>I was operating on the assumption that there?d be a lot more to Earth than just the insurance gag, but if you?re going to end on it?yeah?it?d have been a good idea to kept quiet.

Wow, I just re-read my comment and it’s easy to read that as coming with a bad attitude. I apologize…it’s down to me being very tired this morning.

A more POLITE way to say the same thing is that there’d be more resolved in the episode than just “Hey, they’re back on Earth and here’s a quick gag to cap it off.” But, either way, it ISN’T a good idea to give the final gag away, especially if you intend to use the episode as the final-ever-anything.